


here's to the hearts that ache

by besidemethewholedamntime



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: A little bit of humour, Conversations, F/M, a little bit angsty but with a happy ending, canon to 6.06, set after 6.06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 04:30:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19349542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: '“I'm sorry.""For what?""For saying that my pain comes from you.” He looks pained, like a small boy admitting wrong. “That-that’s not true -I didn’t mean it.”  His eyes, so blue and plaintive. “My pain comes from losing you. It-it hurts when you’re not there.”'They're getting good at this whole 'baring your souls' thing. Fitzsimmons decide it merits another conversation. This one significantly quieter. Canon to 6x06.





	here's to the hearts that ache

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!   
> If you follow me on Instagram you'll know this was what I was furiously working on until 12:30am last night! I loved 6.06 so much and it has inspired endless things but, mostly, it has inspired this. You can maybe describe it as (in my opinion) a calmer, more adult (though I love Fitzsimmons' bickering and always will) approach to what came before in the mind prison.   
> Title and quote are from 'The Fools Who Dream' from La La Land.   
> Enjoy <3

> _Leapt, without looking_   
>  _And tumbled into the Seine_   
>  _The water was freezing_   
>  _She spent a month sneezing_   
>  _But said she would do it again_

-x-

 

In a way, Jemma’s grateful for the mind prison.

While certain aspects were certainly… _unpleasant_ , things feel a lot different now. It’s like the air after a thunderstorm: clear and fresh and freeing. The lead balloons tied to her shoulders have been snipped away. She can stand up straight again.

But though she feels free, there was a lot thrown at her during those minutes she was a prisoner in her own mind, a lot thrown at both of them. It was good to get it out in the open, of course, but now it’s actually out there it needs to be addressed. Something which has recently been established that she’s never been very good at.

Luckily, Fitz goes for it first. Dear, sweet Fitz who just wants to make it alright.

It’s a morning, one of their first back with the team. Between trying to get home, the actual journey home and the tearful, heartfelt reunions, there hasn’t been much time for talking. A blessing or a curse; the coin is still in the air.

“Hey, Jemma?”

“Yes?” She’s towelling her hair; the water drops are tickling her bare feet. She never thought she’d miss the Lighthouse plumbing, but space bathrooms leave many things to be desired.

Fitz stands by the dresser. He was looking for a pair of socks a moment ago. He didn’t know where they were, where he left them over a year ago only he didn’t. She tries not to let it mess with her.

“I’m sorry.”

For a moment Jemma thinks he’s talking about the socks. Then she realises he looks too solemn for that. His hand twitches at his side. Ah, she knows what’s coming.

“For what?”

“For saying that my pain comes from you.” He looks pained, like a small boy admitting wrong. “That-that’s not true -I didn’t mean it.”  His eyes, so blue and plaintive. “My pain comes from losing you. It-it hurts when you’re not there.”

The thing about the air being like after a thunderstorm is that there had to have been an actual thunderstorm before. And there was, a hell of a one. And it left her raw. And the thing about being raw is that things, from the small to the big, hurt _more._

Tears begin to sting the corner of her eyes. Breathless, she sits down on the edge of the bed, feeling exposed in more than the literal sense.

“I didn’t mean it when I said that all my damage comes from you,” she decides to say, the truest thing she can say right now. “My damage comes from lots of things, like you saw,” she murmurs. “Maveth and all that, which wasn’t really your fault.”

“It’s okay, Jemma. You don’t have to say-”

“No.” She holds up a shaky hand. “I do. The thing is, Fitz, is that those things hurt – a lot – but they didn’t damage me as much as losing you did. I meant that part.” She gives him a rueful smile. “It really did mess me up.”

Fitz still stands by the dresser, the socks he’s found held limply in his hands. This brutal, quiet honesty is new to them; neither of them know quite what to do with it. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She waves away his apology. “It’s not like dying was your fault, a choice you made. I never said you meant to damage me.”

He gives her a small smile of his own. “Well at least that’s something.” Then he blows out a breath and sits down on the other side of the bed, throwing the socks down beside him. They bounce off and fall to the floor. Both of them just watch.

“This is hard,” he says, looking at her. Hunched shoulders, eyes with dark thumbprints pressed into the flesh beneath. The signs of a hard life. Not for the first time she thinks of a life far away from here, with green hills and a house and maybe a dog.

“Yeah, it is a bit, isn’t it? A lot easier said than done.”

The duvet cover is threadbare in places; Jemma picks at a loose thread with her fingers. This talking business, about these deepest darkest things from the unvisited corners of her mind, is against everything she was taught as a child. Though her father was talking about nightmares about scoliosis surgery and monsters that lived in the wardrobe – she doubts he ever imagined his advice being abused like this.

“I did notice, you know,” Fitz says suddenly, words bursting forth, like he’s said it before chickening out.

She feels her eyes narrow in response and consciously returns them to a neutral state. This is quiet honesty, now. The adult part. “Notice what?”

He gestures with his hands. “What you did. The whole ‘keeping it to yourself thing’. I did notice. I just thought that was how you dealt with it and I didn’t want to pry.” He looks down at his own side of the duvet, finding his own thread to pick at. His voice is a mumble. “And I kind of thought you’d tell me about the big stuff, you know, when it was really bad.”

God, that does bring a lump to her throat and she tries to swallow past it but she can’t.

“Oh, Fitz, I tried it’s just-” She presses a hand to her head. _Deep breath, Jemma. Honesty. You can handle it._ “It was just so much easier to put it away, to get on with it.” She reaches all the way over for his hand, clutching it tightly. “To sleep at night. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you or didn’t think you could handle me telling you, it was…” She closes her eyes for a moment, another deep breath. “Saying it made it real. I didn’t want it to be real.”

In the nicest of ways, it was never about him. This time, it was all about her.

“It’s okay, Jemma.” His smile is small but ever so sincere. He squeezes her hand back. “I get it. It’s not like I’m great at talking either, I suppose.”

“No, I don’t suppose either of us would win awards for it any time soon.”

He smiles. “I am sorry, though. I took a few cheap shots in there, about Maveth and-and about Will and, um, saying you abandoned me after my brain injury.” He looks down again. She wishes he would just look at her. “That wasn’t fair, I know why you did that and, well all of it actually, and-”

“It’s alright, I know.” And she does. They’ve talked about it before. For once, something they actually have. And he’s right: it was abandonment. Him being injured wasn’t something she could shove inside her little box and pretend it wasn’t there, because _he_ wasn’t there. The guilt, the fear that she was making him worse, the belief that she was… so the story went on.

And he’s right: she has no doubts that he was dying on the inside when she left. It’s just that she was, too.

“For the record, I said some unfair things to you as well in there. That stuff about AIDA and The Doctor. I knew how guilty you felt about that, and I shouldn’t have used it against you.”

Jemma knows they were bickering, arguing like the used to when they threw anything and everything at each other. Only the stakes are different now; the weight behind the punches is heavier, the knockouts more final. She knew how horrible he felt, how he probably still feels, and to use that in a fight is something she’ll never do again.

He shuffles closer to her, bridging the gap between them, though it wasn’t that big to start with. “Guess we’re both a little messed up.”

“If we think of our alternate selves in there then I’d say we’re maybe a little bit more than a ‘little messed up’.”

“Oh, God,” he groans, head falling into his hands. “Where did that monster of yours come from anyway?”

It feels strange to laugh about it but she does anyway. “Oh, gosh, I don’t know. I feel like it started with scoliosis surgery and ended probably when I saw you on Kitson.” She nudges him on the knee.  “What about you? The Doctor. Where’s he from?”

She almost regrets asking but Fitz doesn’t look wounded when he looks up. In fact, he looks surprised.

“My dad,” he says, with a _duh_ in his voice. “Something that sick and twisted? Definitely has to come from my dad.”

“Right, sorry. I’ll remember.” Then she shivers. “Ugh, like I’ll always remember the two of them-”

“Aw, Jemma. Please. Don’t.” Fitz presses the heels of his hands in his eyes. “I don’t even want to think about that.”

“What the worst parts of ourselves getting it on? Who wouldn’t want to remember that?” At Fitz’s look she holds in her laugh. “Right. Sorry. Disturbing. Of course.”

It’s kind of sweet, really. Even in their worst moments they still can’t be kept from each other. If you squint, it’s the stuff romance novels are made of.

Fitz takes her hand again, softly. “Also, about the therapy thing-”

“Fitz, it’s okay. We said stuff to each other in there. It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. I mean, clearly, you definitely need therapy – that thing was something else and-”

“Fitz!”

“Right, yeah.” He strokes her hand softly with his thumb. “I shouldn’t have said it like that but yeah. You do need therapy, Jemma. But maybe I do, too.”

Her heart that was hammering so fast it was threatening to burst out of her chest has suddenly stalled for a moment. Has she heard him correctly? “What?” She asks, softly

His eyes are honest and wide, no fear within them. Good. She doesn’t like it when he’s afraid.

“Maybe we both need it. This has all been a lot to deal with, for both of us and I think that maybe this is something we need to do, to work out together but-”

“But on our own,” she finishes, gently.

“Yeah,” he nods., folding and unfolding her fingers “Separately. I think we need to.”

This is not something they can do together, she understands. This journey of healing they’re about to embark on must be a personal thing. It’s not their relationship that has problems. It’s not couple’s therapy they need. They need to do it because they want to do it for Leopold James Fitz and Jemma Anne Simmons. To be somebody healthier than who they are, before being somebody to each other.

“At the same time, in the same direction but on different roads…”

“Parallel,” she tells him with a soft smile.

“Yeah,” he says. “Parallel.”

Still holding hands, they flop backwards ono the bed, exhausted by this honesty. This is how they used to watch the stars all those years ago. All that Jemma sees when she looks up now is a grey ceiling, a couple of cracks at the edges. But it wasn’t always like this and, one day, when she looks up, she’ll be able to see the stars again.

“You’re my greatest strength,” she whispers into the quiet, “and my greatest weakness, and I love you so much. I’ll always keep wanting to save you.”

His response is not immediate, but when it comes it makes her want to cry.

“I’ll save you every time, or I’ll die trying to because you make me weak and strong all at the same time and because I love you. I think that you’re amazing.”

“Amazing?” She looks at him incredulously, propping herself up on one elbow. So much for their talk clearing the air. He is still as deluded as he was before.

But his eyes are clear and his voice is steady when he says, “Yeah, amazing.”

“Even with all those awful things you found inside my head?”

He chuckles. “It was a horror show, sure, but it’s you. It’s all you. And I love you just as much with them as I would without.”

Damn Fitz because his thoughts are always such a bloody mess except for when he’s being like this. He has quite the way with words, he does.

“I-I don’t know how you can still speak like that about me” she mumbles, feeling a tear finally escape. He brushes it away gently with his thumb.

“It’s just the truth, Jemma. And if you can still love me with everything that’s inside _my_ head.” She giggles before he continues.

“We’re messy, kind of broken and yet we’re still together, still love each other.” They’re still holding hands; she hadn’t realised until just now, so natural is him being an extension of her. “A love like _that_ , stronger than any curse. We’re-”

“Unstoppable together,” she finishes quietly.

“Yeah,” he smiles. In his eyes she sees what he sees: two people, who love each other more than anything, who have overcome the worst, have been the worst, and are still standing together at the end of it all. And she sees how beautiful that really is. “Exactly that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading - I hope you enjoyed! Please feel free to leave kudos/comments. Please feel free not to. Either way, I hope you have a lovely day <3


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